Archive for category: Success

According to an article in Management Today although businesses claim to have broadened their CEO selection pool, a staggering 83% of HR directors never get promoted to the role of CEO, reveal Sharon Mullen and Jo Sellwood-Taylor of research firm Mullwood Partnership. Here’s a staggering statistic. Despite two-thirds of HR directors harbouring ambitions to become chief executive, only a fraction work for companies where the HR director has ever been awarded the top job. The question is: why? Story You Read more […]

It doesn’t matter where you look, Learning and Development folks don’t have a great press. The now infamous Capita report pulled no punches in its rather scathing review of the state of the UK learning and development profession. But is that really fair? Is it balanced? Story I came across some information from interviews with five CEOs about their L&D people. The CEOs ran businesses ranging from 100 to 1,000 employees. Here’s what they said: You’re nothing more than Read more […]

Few businesses are so vertically integrated that they can do absolutely everything. For most, there is the need to explore collaboration with other organisations in order to achieve their strategic goals. But what happens when multiple organisations require the same learning and development solution? How can they jointly collaborate to achieve a common goal, ensure robustness of design and save money at the same time? Story In a previous post I urged businesses to seek out common areas Read more […]

We often talk about what makes a successful leader or a successful business, but what about a country – what makes an entire country a success? And if we knew what made a whole country a success, could we learn from this in our own businesses? Story An article in The Economist caught my eye. When ranked against a range of county-wide success factors such as global competitiveness, ease of doing business, global innovation, corruption perceptions, human development and prosperity. When Read more […]

Leadership is complex, so we’re told – but is it really? We hear that “leaders are born, not made,” we hear about leadership traits and leadership styles and a whole pile of other things that supposedly make someone a great leader. But does it have to be that complex? Perhaps there’s a simpler approach – one that we can all align to. Story Every time the elections come round the conversation turns to leadership. We ask if the people on the TV and radio seeking our votes are Read more […]

We are often told about business transformation and the powerful effects it has, but I wondered what transformation actually is. When does business change become truly transformational? I came across an article in the Financial Times which provided an excellent answer to my question and one I would like to share in this week’s post. Story Antony Jenkins may not be a household name but the business he heads up – Barclays – most certainly is. Barclays is one of the biggest banks Read more […]

Every once in a while someone comes along and does something that profoundly changes what we do and what happens next. Newton gave us an understanding of gravity (amongst many other things), Brunel gave us bold and sublime engineering, Stephenson gave us the railway, Whittle gave us the jet engine and then, just when we thought we were out of inventions, Sir Timothy John “Tim” Berners-Lee, OM, KBE, FRS, FREng, FRSA – also known as “TimBL” – gave us the World Wide Web. Crikey, Read more […]